Week 34, Day 237 of August 2023

Pink Cosmos 2023

 Another Friday, another month fading into the past, more rain, the days continue to build a path towards the autumn. I looked at a flannel shirt today, hanging there in my closet. Appearing as if on the border of a power nap, the collar droops and curves, stretching above an open unbuttoned yawn.

There is a battle with the laundry. I say,  I've done enough! The basket says, Oh no you haven't! I'm considering how I can do away with using laundry baskets. Eliminating the amount of lip one gets, the mental sass from objects in our home environment is a real challenge.

Instead of soup on dreary overcast days, I think a lively green salad and/or stuffed grape leaves will be better.  

My mother had a wide variety of meals she made, like stuffed green peppers. I wonder how I lived through having stuffed green peppers in my youth. I stopped making them decades ago due to indigestion.  My menu is less than a quarter of what she served. Building a recipe file is a good idea. However, the problem with recipes is that you have to shop for the ingredients. 

Have a Delicious Ingredients' Weekend!

Design your own tartan

Hand sew a fall fleece hat 

Read about the Coriolis Effect

Poach pears

Create a veggie goulash

Sing to a summer squash

Go for a walk with a friend

Read a few Shakespeare Sonnets

Tell your Wok a story

FYI Post

 My apologies

The delete trash can is so close to the check mark on the comment page, some of the comments I have approved ended up being deleted by my mistake. If your comment doesn't show up after a day or so, then please leave another. 

Otherwise, nice day. Got overcast in the last half of the afternoon. It was nice to sit outdoors, putter, trim plants, toss patio junk. 

Hope ya'll had a nice day

The Buy the Farm, Dirt Desert, Bucket Kicking Days

 

Party is over, done with, no turning back the hands of time for me. I'm old for sure.* No this is the new 60. 

So how am I feeling about being 3 quarters of a century as an air breather? In a state of awe actually, that I made it this far, especially when I think back to times when that felt iffy. 

Ah, the adventures of youth, they aren't near as cool as it is to be so experienced living. There has been history I have lived. I was alive when Einstein walked the Earth. When Eisenhower was no longer president, I cried thinking America's lost a father. I am a living part of history from the hippie flower child era. 

As a side effect, I am feeling a sense of needing to adjust my attitude(s). Tidy up, get things sorted, clean up my projects, and such. Also, consider doing things that won't matter much, like trying out that temporary tattoo. I'm not interested in capturing my younger years, being hip, cool. I've been that. I am that. My interest is in having fun being full of years. 

The aches and pains, skin changes, weight gain and such are not fun. The idea that this is thee most defined era of My Life is hilarious to me. I know for sure I will not repeat 75 years living. At most, I might make it to a hundred, 2048. More likely, I will be gone within ten years. Scary it is not. I believe is some form, life continues by the grace of God. 

Human existence has always been fascinating to me. What puzzles me is that for all the advances in science, there is no way yet discovered to help folks transition to the next stage. Paranormal investigations are mostly theater, I believe, to the majority of people. In reality, those people that promote the paranormal, are the ones helping people to understand that life as we have been told, doesn't have a clear boundary between life and death.

*My birthday has gone by.

Thoughts On Group Mentality

 A weird idea breezed across my brain, that if conservatives adopt the style of a liberal looking hippie type person, then that might confuse people with conspiracy obsessed syndrome into regaining their common sense. 

It isn't a secret that people in general want to be accepted, fit in, get along with others.  In World History there are societies that adopted a uniform dress code. Hello pilgrim.

In art, composition is key. In life, context, I believe, is the clearest lens to view the images we accept or reject.

We identify with groups in particular clothes, a football team geared up, soldiers in uniform, gowns at a gala. When those people are in the personal time clothes, we can't tell who they identify with. Every time we throw on a pair of jeans and a tee shirt, we disguise part of who we are. If we wear the same style no matter what, then we can develop a group cohesiveness that might help people experiencing a lack of common sense to regain the reality they're suppressing. 

Think what it would do to society if for one full week we all wore only tee shirts and jeans, and tossed on some hippie beads.

P.S. I'm a glass bead wearing conservative on the liberal side of the spectrum

Thoughts on the End of Summer

Autumn Gold
Lumberville, Pennsylvania
24x24 inch oil

Fern Coppedge, 1883 ~ 1951 

American Impressionist

Yes indeed, those autumn colors aren't far away. Signs of fall are already being seen here and there in Vermont at this lower elevation near Lake Champlain west of the Green Mountains.

Fern Coppedge's winter snow paintings are a favorite. I learned about her in an art magazine I bought at a library sale many years ago. 

The backyard landscape in the photo has a familiar feel because that is similar to where us kids played in the backyard days of stay off the steps and don't climb the trees.

And so goes the longing for a few days of summery weather before the autumnal equinox on 23 September 2023. Time to consider scheduling a flu shot, putting away the sandals, and deciding if there will be a foliage photography tour. After summer's plans were wiped away by rain, I hesitate to put my heart on the future season. An improviso approach feels more comforting and practical.

Lincoln Gap Foliage 2021

Thus, taking in the days as weather and health permit is the pace of fall this year for me. 

The Beautiful Reseeding Morning Glory

Morning Glories on twine

     From a wildflower seed packet, the morning glories (photo) are the first green leaves to sprout along with dandelions. The original seeds were planted circa 2005. They bloom into autumn until the first hard frost.  

Amazing that is has been 18 years reseeding morning glories keep blooming in my planters, and from in the ground. Some years the twine goes across the top of the patio window. This year,  the plants aren't as lush.

Is there an old stand by flower reseeding in your garden?

Day 230 of Week 33, August 2023

Red Cosmos

The red cosmos didn't respond to Miracle Grow the same as the more common white and pink cosmos. Instead, the red variety puts the energy into stem and leaf growth.

The feathery leafed flower was put in a large planter mid to late June. Late August, this week is the first time the red cosmos has bloomed. Main stems are as thick as my thumb. Beautiful as greenery, it will make a nice tall border next year among Bachelor Buttons and white cosmos.

Have a Blooming Good Weekend!

Read a new author

Shop linen dish towels online

Design 2023 holiday cards

Cringe at Halloween in stores already

Change passwords

Refresh old website accounts

Dance a waltz by yourself

Tell an apple a secret

Make applesauce

Summer Fields & Summer Rain

At the Dead Creek Wildlife Refuge visitors area on Route 17, Addison, Vermont, the Champlain Valley floor is delightful to see, flat land stretching to the horizons north and south, and mountains west and east.

The heavy rain clouds can be seen for miles rolling towards the east from over the Adirondack Mountains in the west on their way over the Green Mountains.

On the one afternoon I thought to take a short trip to the visitor's viewing area parking lot, there were  pockets of downpours, less than a quarter mile visibility, with road ruts deep in water. Three downpours I drove through. Exhausting. I am grateful to God there were tailgaters behind me.

 

Route 17 Addison Vermont

Looking north towards Panton, Vermont, the line of mountains visible just above the tree line resembles the visibility in the downpours. It was unreal.

The Outdoors, Reading & Soup

Where the bird seed goes on the deck, birds are gathering again. 

One afternoon there was a small crowd of feathery critters. 

I thought the mourning dove was going to jump in the flowers.  

As I type, there is a flock of birds racing across the back yard in the rain.

Are their signs of autumn where you are?

Another rainy day here in Vermont. The h button is sticking on my PC keyboard. Laundry is caugt up except for a quilt and some blankets. Wednesday feels like Saturday. Beads of water dot the clothesline like crystals waiting like me for sunshine. I have a new to me book to read by Susan Wittig Albert. I suspect I might have soup today to go with the weather outdoors.

Lentil Walnut Soup

On the stove as I type

Style, Attitude & the Me of It

Dry Cosmos on the Stem
Watercolor study

 

Cosmos Drying
Digital photograph

The composition will include cosmos that are in bloom as well as buds in a blurry background.

Acrylic in progress

This summer has been one of abundant dull light for painting indoors.

Speaking of dull.

My wardrobe is Earthy colors, nothing real bright other than white. The other day I bought a pair of Cynthia Rowley long flowing viscose wide leg boho print pants. Think 1960-70s hippie era. Even the tie waist strings have wood beads at the ends. 

The photograph is taken at the hem area. 

Here's the thing. I have yet to try them on. They will fit, and be super comfortable. My issue is my attitude towards them. Although the do represent Me, I feel timid about wearing them for what they represent. Being a baby boomer, there's the hippie era episode in my history, high school, college. Actually, we were called freaks as in think comedian George Carlin. 

But that was then. I left all that behind in 1971.

I am here in the now. I don't mind looking like an old lady. I even like elastic waist pants. It took years, but I wear them all the time now. I only have a beer every summer to pay homage to my flower child era skills. I still use language I used as a teenager, edited to fit the person I'm talking to. 

What happened? Why the lack of embracing a part of my history that was as exciting as it was tragic? I remember the glow in my soul of being a writer, experiencing life to write about.

The answer that sticks out is the Attitude from judgmental folks labeling a person of any age, who wears certain clothes as getting high, ultra liberal with a stash of protest signs magically fitting into their pockets like Hermionie's bag in Harry Potter films. Seriously, you dress like that, many people will label you. 

Point being, I all on my own, on purpose, as well meaning as it is, has fit myself into a style that is not Me. 

So now I'm wondering what I'll look like when I decide to be Me.

I suspect there will be careful editing of my style because I've already searched online for temporary tattoos.

This will be fun.

Just Because You Are You

 

You don't need a reason to celebrate how wonderful you are.

You can make all of your life a celebration.

Attitude.

Positive Attitude

Every time I guess Wordle in 2 tries (3 times total thus far), I feel elated, blessed, hygge, numb stunned.

Wordle is good brain training.